Middle-aged are riskier drinkers than young adults, study finds

Those in middle age are more likely than young adults to exceed alcohol limits and develop serious health problems, finds charity Drinkaware…

More than half (59%) of middle-aged drinkers said they did not want guidance on how to moderate their intake

Drinkaware said middle-aged drinkers might think their drinking was not harmful because they were not experiencing negative consequences associated with drunkenness.

However, when asked, one in six (17%) of 45- to 64-year-old drinkers said they had a feeling of guilt or remorse after drinking and one in 10 (11%) said they failed to do what was normally expected of them because of their drinking.

I came across the above article just now while trawling the internet for interesting alcohol related content. I have here copied the salient bits and have commented below on the paragraph in the article about not wanting guidance. I think the guidance bit is really interesting. Why should it be any surprise that 6 in 10 drinkers didn’t want guidance on their drinking? Because unless you know you have a problem, why would you seek or want to follow any guidance? Most drinkers believe they have their drinking under control. As soon as they admit to themselves that their own drinking is problematic, then they are already on course to solving their problem. That’s why Alcoholics Anonymous are keen to stress that alcoholics usually have to hit rock-bottom before they can turn things around.

If you don’t actually want to slow down or give up drinking, then you will do all you can to distance yourself from the people whom we are told in the literature need to cut down their intake. Many of the articles about problem drinking make mention of the symptoms of alcoholism, and if you as a drinker don’t identify with any of these, then it’s very easy to conclude that you don’t have a problem and therefore don’t need a solution.

And that’s the problem with so much of the literature, including press articles, about alcohol. They talk about guidance and limits and problem-drinking, as though their audience have identified themselves as the target group. I never did. So it all fell on deaf ears.

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Published by notalcoholicbut

I have been alcohol-free since end December 2013. Lots of things, good and bad, have happened in the time since I stopped drinking, but nothing has tempted me back to the dark side! Actually it wasn't always all that dark - I had a lot of fun with alcohol over the 36 years of drinking. But on December 12th 2013 I came to the realisation that I needed a change. Things had started to get a bit messy, and I began to realise that alcohol might be more of a problem than a solution. It dawned on me that if I didn't drink, my world would be unimaginably different. That prospect seemed quite exciting all of a sudden. A new adventure. It's that adventure that I tell in my book "Not Alcoholic, But..."
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